Battle Castle features an extensive online world that continues to grow every day. This trans-medieval journey includes exclusive content, behind-the-scenes material, and plenty of opportunities to #gomedieval. Every Monday, we share awesome medieval moments we've found on the web - people who, like us, have been inspired to bring the Middle Ages into their daily lives. Here are this week's highlights:
3 ways to #gomedieval
Wait Wait – Don’t I Know You?: Facial recognition technology used to fight terrorism could be used to solve historical art mysteries.
In most cases, the people featured in Medieval and Renaissance paintings were real people, and most of the time we have records of who they were. But a few faces still remain unknown. Not for long! Three scholars at University of Columbia, Riverside have embarked on a project to identify these unknowns using facial recognition software.
Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the project — “FACES: Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems” — will employ these new technologies to compare paintings with death masks of known individuals. For this to succeed, they will have to improve facial recognition – typically designed for 2D images – to understand 3D. They hope that with time, these scans will be common practice for museums and archives.
For more on this great new discovery, check out the article by our friends at medievalists.net.
Making A Bang in 16th Century Germany
The Library at the University of Pennsylvania has recently digitized this fascinating Treatise on Munitions and Explosive Devices, which outlines covert plans to attack a castle. Plenty of inspiration for your next siege in its many and sometimes strange illustrations. Our favorite illustration of them all is the one of a cat and bird with rocket packs (see above). Go get ‘em, Mittens!
Flip through this and many other manuscripts at the UPenn Library.
Homemade Chainmail: The latest fashion trend and pastime!
As they say, ‘everything old is new again’. Bell-bottoms were back in the 90s, gladiator sandals a few years ago, and today it’s chainmail. And this chainmail is old in more ways than one. Made from recycled pop can tops, this armor is a scavenger’s delight! Not to mention, it’s much lighter than the real deal.
Here’s a tutorial on how to make your very own pop tab chain mail.
Check out the video and post your creations on our facebook page!
Have a #gomedieval experience to share? Let us know.
-The Gatekeeper
Post new comment